Those searching for the motivation behind the Minneapolis school shooting may be missing the obvious, as those who track violence against churches can attest.
Since 2018, the annual number of “hostile incidents” against U.S. Catholic and Protestant churches, including vandalism, arson, bomb threats and assaults, has soared by 730%, the Family Research Council’s Center for Religious Liberty reported in its annual report released in August.
Arielle Del Turco, the center’s director, said the FBI “clearly has enough evidence” to investigate the deadly Aug. 27 shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School as an anti-Catholic hate crime.
“The shooter targeted a Catholic school while children were praying during morning Mass,” Ms. Del Turco told The Washington Times. “Beyond that, he wrote taunting messages including ‘Where is your God’ on a loaded magazine used in the attack. Religion was clearly a factor in this shooting, albeit one of several.”
Certainly the shooting suspect, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound immediately after the attack, had no shortage of perceived enemies.
Robin Westman, a 23-year-old biological male who identified as female, left behind messages written in journals and scrawled on weapons expressing admiration for previous school shooters and hatred for President Trump and groups including Blacks, Hispanics, Jews and Israelis.
His antipathy toward the church was expressed more elaborately.
“For instance, he is seen on video conducting target practice at a picture of Jesus Christ, crowned with thorns, and mocking the words of the institution of the Eucharist, writing on his rifle, ‘take this all of you and eat,’” CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt said in a statement.
CatholicVote began tracking attacks on Catholic churches and schools at the start of the George Floyd riots in May 2020, compiling a list of offenses that range from Satanic graffiti and beheaded statues to the shooting death of a Kansas priest in April. That number is now 524.
“Entering a church and opening fire on children while they pray is a horrific act of murder, which by all indications was fueled by the killer’s anti-Christian hatred,” said Ms. Reinhardt.
Attacks on Catholic and Christian churches have risen by 730% since 2018.
This must end.
pic.twitter.com/lqiq3ElpLw
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 28, 2025
FBI Director Kash Patel said the Annunciation shooting, which left two children dead and 21 students and staff injured, is being investigated as “an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics,” but not everyone is convinced.
The New York Times reported that it was “hard to imagine drove Ms. Westman to attack before killing herself” in an Aug. 28 article, headlined “Minneapolis Suspect Knew Her Target, But Motive Is a Mystery.”
The Institute for Countering Digital Extremism and Accelerationism Research Consortium released an Aug. 28 “intelligence bulletin” that said: “There is no single or clear ideological motivation for Westman.”
“Westman represents a growing trend within targeted violence wherein individuals attack an apparent symbolic target (though likely driven more by personal grievance with the target) and have little to no specific ideological motivation for the attack nor the target,” the bulletin read.
The Minneapolis-based MinnPost said “Patel’s determination that the Annunciation shooting be investigated as a hate crime against Catholics may be premature.”
“But it aligns with the Trump administration’s refocus of the Justice Department to redirect resources to ferret out antisemitism and what President Donald Trump has determined to be an ‘anti-Christian bias,’” said the Sept. 3 article, headlined “Robin Westman attacked children in a Catholic school. Was it a hate crime?”
Minnesota Bishop Robert Barron, who heads the Winona-Rochester diocese, called assessments downplaying the church connection “puzzling.”
“That people are even wondering whether the tragedy in Minneapolis is an instance of anti-Catholic violence is puzzling to me,” Bishop Barron told Fox News Channel in an Aug. 29 statement.
“If someone attacked a synagogue while congregants were praying, would anyone doubt that it was an antisemitic act?” he aid. “If someone shot up a mosque while the devout were praying, would anyone doubt that it was an anti-Islamic attack? So, why would we even hesitate to say that a maniac shooting into a Catholic church while children are at prayer was committing an anti-Catholic act?”
Said Ms. Del Turco: “It’s always a shame when religious bias is not acknowledged.”
The shooter knew the school well. Westman attended the private PreK-8 academy as a child, and Westman’s mother worked there as a secretary before retiring in 2021.
Westman struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts, writing in a farewell letter to family that “I am not well. I am not right,” but the shooter was still coherent enough to purchase firearms legally, draw a map of the chapel and time the attack for Mass during the first week of school.
“While the attack on Catholic school children at Mass was clearly carried out by someone mentally disturbed and emotionally damaged by gender ideology, divorce, and drug use, this does not change the reality that attacks on Catholic churches are on the rise,” said Ashley McGuire, senior fellow at the Catholic Association.
In addition to the 500-plus attacks on churches since 2020, Ms. McGuire said there were “more than 400 acts of attempted violence and hostility against Christian churches more broadly just last year alone.”
The sheer number of hostile incidents has painted a target on the backs of churches, fueling what she called a “dangerous contagion effect.”
“Two additional violent attempts against Catholics at church and school have been thwarted in the days since the Minneapolis shooting,” Ms. McGuire said. “My children’s opening school Mass required police protection. There is no question that Catholics today face increasing threats of violence fueled by bigotry and hatred of what we believe.”